


to stay here (with you)

by viscrael



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Relationships, M/M, Pining, Pirates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, hmmm. more fanfic for my own dnd ocs. interesting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 15:12:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12820239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: “You wanna know something?”“What?”“I grew up thinking my soul mate didn’t want anything to do with me,” Markas says.--hmmm pirate boys in a soulmate au





	to stay here (with you)

**Author's Note:**

> this is 100% just for me but im uploading it here anyway

“You wanna know something?”

Markas asks the question while they’re in their shared room, both pretending to sleep. The Retribution’s methodic rocking should be relaxing, but for Sven it only makes him itch to get up. Insomnia has plagued him the past few weeks, and sleep has evaded him more nights than not for reasons he can’t identify. He has since given up actually trying to sleep. Now, he’s only restless.

“What?” Sven turns his head to look at Markas, but he finds he can’t see the other in the darkness of their cabin.

“I grew up thinking my soul mate didn’t want anything to do with me,” Markas says.

There’s a pause. During it, Sven stays quiet, unsure what to do with that information. A pit forms in his stomach as the seconds pass without Markas saying anything else, the information sinking in. The ship rocks gently in their silence, and he can hear the ocean outside, can hear his own heartbeat, and he’s so vividly aware of the guilt that pools in his stomach, the guilt that opens his mouth for him and begins to spill out.

"I’m sorry,” he says. It feels inadequate, silly. He winces.

“Don’t be,” Markas laughs. He’s like that. Laughing when he should be upset, or at the very least annoyed. “I’m not blaming you. You don’t really have that much control over the first thing you say to me, after all. It’s a fate thing, you know?”

“Still. If I weren’t so…”

“Really, I’m not blaming you,” he says before Sven can continue his apology. “I was just going to say, I grew up thinking the person I was made to be with was going to want nothing to do with me and leave. Which, like, wasn’t an unfounded fear. I mean, there’re plenty of people who reject their soul mates ‘cause they refuse to make it work or they’re in love with someone else or they don’t wanna be tied down to a person. I just assumed that’s what you were gonna be like, and I kinda spent my whole life up until now coming to terms with that fact. I was already sorta okay with it when we met.”

Another pause. This time, Sven can hear Markas shuffle in his bed and lean over to the desk between them. There’s the sound of a match being struck, then a light flickers to life and the room is cast in the hazy orange of candlelight. Markas is there, leaning over the candle, his hair loose around his shoulders and his left ear free of his usual earring. He’s already looking at Sven.

“I didn’t want a soul mate,” Sven admits suddenly. It’s the guilt in his stomach, the knowledge that he hurt Markas for _years_ before ever knowing him, that lets him admit that. It’s harder with the candlelight, because he can see the way Markas’s expression doesn’t change, can see how after a moment, he only offers a small, understanding smile.

“Yeah, I figured that,” Markas says. “No offense or anything, but you made it pretty clear with the whole ignoring-me-for-a-month thing.”

"I…” Sven’s face burns with shame. “It was just…”

“You didn’t want to be tied down to someone?”

“No…”

“You didn’t want it to be…me?”

“No! That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

Sven pushes his sheets back, the fabric only bothering him as he becomes more frantic, trying to think of the closest explanation to the truth. It’s always been hard for him to articulate how he feels, but somehow this is worse than usual.

“I don’t know,” he says, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “I didn’t want someone who unconditionally cared about me. Or someone I was meant to stay alive for.”

“You didn’t want to have to be important to another person?”

Outside their cabin, there are creaking floorboards, footsteps, and the soft baritone of Abram’s voice as he discusses something with someone else. Who the second party is, Sven can’t pick out. He and Markas both pause their conversation until the footsteps retreat and the voices have faded completely.

“I don’t know,” Sven whispers back, just in case anyone else is still around. As much as he loves Abram, he doesn’t think he’d want him overhearing this.

Markas asks suddenly, “Can I lay with you?”

“What? Why?”

“It’s cold,” he says. “And your blankets don’t have holes in them.”

To Sven and the adrenaline of the conversation running through him, it isn’t anything near cold. But he doesn’t protest, only nodding in response, and Markas crawls out of his bed and into Sven’s. The bed is not meant for two people, but they make do with what they have. Markas definitely isn’t shy about rearranging their limbs and overlapping skin as necessary.

The half-elf settles with his side pressed against Sven’s, their legs touching lightly and his arms over the covers. He lays his arms over the sheets palm-up, and Sven can see Markas’s right wrist this way, the scribbled words in Sven’s own handwriting tattooed to his body, reading _leave me the fuck alone_.

Even with what Markas told him, he can’t fully imagine what it must have felt like, growing up with the knowledge that _that_ was the first sentence your soulmate would ever speak to you. And Sven did that to him. Because he’s spent almost his whole life afraid of getting close to another person, he caused that for Markas. He is the only one at fault here. His stomach turns again.

“Stop that,” Markas says, and the wrist moves, the words disappearing from Sven’s line of sight as Markas pats his cheek gently, somewhere between a very half-hearted slap and an affection tap. Unlike other times he’s done that, though, the hand stays on his cheek, lingering at Sven’s jaw. “I know what you’re thinking ‘bout, and stop it. I already told you I’m fine with it. It’s not your fault, and even if it was, I’ve been cool with it for years now.”

“How did you even know I was thinking about that,” Sven mumbles, less of a question and more of an attempt to take the conversation away from him.

“Because you have that look on your face,” Markas says. “That means you’re feeling something bad and you don’t know what to do with it.”

The hand stills, cupping Sven’s jaw. The candlelight gives Markas’s hair a copper glow, and his skin is cold. He wasn’t lying about needing to warm up, then, but Sven is in the opposite boat; he feels like he’s overheating from the skin contact, feels like he’ll explode if they don’t stop touching. Markas is always so tactile, always so nonchalant about physical contact, and ever since Sven warmed up to him he’s gone out of his way to touch, if only in little ways—arms slung over another’s shoulder, standing so close their elbows bump, grabbing others by the wrists to show them something, knocking shoulders playfully.

But this doesn’t feel the same. And Sven realizes, not for the first time since he revealed to Markas that they’re soul mates, that they have never formally talked about what _kind_ of soul mates they are. Every person has a soul mate, but not every person’s is romantic; some are platonic, and it’s up to the two individuals to figure out which is which.

It’s been months since Sven spoke his first words to Markas, and they still haven’t tried to figure it out.

Markas’s hand moves again, down from Sven’s jawline to his neck to his shoulder. “I don’t blame you for anything,” he says, and it takes Sven a moment to remember what they were talking about at all. “I’m glad you’re in my life. I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else.”

Sven can’t respond. He wants to, but the words get stuck in his throat, catching there on his breath as Markas’s hand lands finally on his shoulder, and he should say something, he should, but he has never been so aware of his shirt’s fabric before. The worn cotton is the only thing keeping their skin from touching here, just inches to the left of his collarbone; if Markas reached over, he could dip across Sven’s clavicle, feel the vague outline of the bone there. He doesn’t know why this is different than any other time they’ve touched like this. This _definitely_ isn’t the first time Markas has done this.

But it feels so new, and he can still hear the ocean outside their cabin so clearly, and it has been months and they never discussed it.

“Oh,” Sven says, a million years too late. Markas looks like he’s about to laugh at how belated his response was, but Sven rushes to speak before the atmosphere can change to something less. “I didn’t want a soulmate because I was scared.”

Markas doesn’t look shocked, but he does seem intrigued; Sven doubts he expected this to be brought up again.

The hand on his shoulder doesn’t move. Sven continues.

“It’s…like you said. I was scared of having to be important to someone else.” He licks his lips, dry suddenly. His shirt is scratchy against his skin, irritating all the sudden. He can’t remember ever being this hyperaware of his clothes against him before, but they’re all he can think about now. That, and the hand on his shoulder, and where their legs are touching on the bed, and there’s an itch on his lower back that he won’t be able to get rid of, even if he _could_ reach it. It’s his soul mark, burning for a reason he’s not sure of.

“Because if you’re important to someone, it means you’re real?” Markas guesses.

As expected, it’s exactly why. Sven has only been here a few months, but they both feel like they’ve known each other for decades now. He nods.

“And you don’t want to have to deal with being real.”

He nods again.

Markas moves his hand away, and Sven wants it back for a reason he’s not sure of.

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Markas says.

“It’s not your fault.”

“No, I know. You’ve felt like that for years, right? It’s why Abram had to work so hard to get you to agree to join us. I can’t fix that in a matter of months. Probably not in a year. I might _never_ fix it, honestly. But…”

“But?”

“But I would like it, I guess, if you enjoyed what time you have with me,” Markas says. He pushes strands of loose hair behind his ear, looking at a spot on Sven’s shoulder. “I won’t ask anything of you but that. I meant what I said earlier, about how I wouldn’t want it to be anybody but you. But I think I’d like it most if you wanted me here too, you know?”

There are footsteps outside the cabin, but Sven doesn’t pay them any mind. “Of course I want you here,” he assures quickly. “I—I wouldn’t want it to be anyone else, either. Of course I _want_ you here.”

Markas looks up. His eyes roam Sven’s face for a good few seconds; he’s searching for something, although Sven doesn’t know what. When he seems satisfied, the corners of his lips turn up into a big, syrupy smile.

“Good,” he says, grinning with white teeth. “I’m glad.”

The thought crosses Sven’s mind then, watching Markas with his wide-toothed smile and the stretch of his lips and the dark color of his cheeks and the way his ears point backwards when he’s happy, that he wants, more than anything, _actually_ to be here. To stay here, and to have Markas to care about, and for Markas to care about him.

And another thought crosses then, too. That he could lean in, just a few centimeters really, and press their mouths together—a peck, even, because that’s all it would take to make himself clear. Sven has always lacked in verbal communication. He could tell Markas what he wants here, now, and there could be no way for Markas to misinterpret that, right? No room for him thinking that Sven doesn’t want him around or that he doesn’t want a soulmate or that he hates Markas? It would be cleared up, and maybe they could work out the whole platonic-or-romantic-soulmate thing now, too, to keep Sven from spending his time guessing wildly.

He wants to do it. Badly.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he breaks eye contact from Markas, turning his head towards the opposite wall of the cabin, and focuses on where their bodies press together.

“I’m glad too,” he says. 


End file.
